The Wilderness Debate Rages On: Continuing the Great New Wilderness Debate

by Nelson, Michael P.; Callicott, J. Baird

• ISBN13: 9780820331713
• ISBN10: 0820331716
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-10-15
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

Ten years ago,The Great New Wilderness Debatebegan a cross-disciplinary conversation about the varied constructions of "wilderness" and the controversies that surround them.The Wilderness Debate Rages Onwill reinvigorate that conversation and usher in a second decade of debate.Like its predecessor, the book gathers both critiques and defenses of the idea of wilderness from a wide variety of perspectives and voices.The Wilderness Debate Rages Onincludes the best explorations of the concept of the concept of wilderness from the past decade, underappreciated essays from the early twentieth century that offer an alternative vision of the concept and importance of wilderness, and writings meant to clarify or help us rethink the concept of wilderness. Narrative writers such as Wendell Berry, Scott Russell Sanders, Marilynne Robinson, Kathleen Dean Moore, and Lynn Maria Laitala are also given a voice in order to show how the wilderness debate is expanding outside the academy.The writers represented in the anthology include ecologists, environmental philosophers, conservation biologists, cultural geographers, and environmental activists. The book begins with little-known papers by early twentieth-century ecologists advocating the preservation of natural areas for scientific study, not, as did Thoreau, Muir, and the early Leopold, for purposes of outdoor recreation. The editors argue that had these writers influenced the eventual development of federal wilderness policy, our national wilderness system would better serve contemporary conservation priorities for representative ecosystems and biodiversity.

Author Biography

Michael P. Nelson is an associate professor of environmental ethics and philosophy at Michigan State University, where he is affiliated with the Lyman Briggs College, the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, and the Department of Philosophy. J. Baird Callicott is a professor of philosophy at the University of North Texas. Nelson and Callicott are coeditors of The Great New Wilderness Debate (Georgia) and The Wilderness Debate Rages On (Georgia), and coauthors of American Indian Environmental Ethics: An Ojibwa Case Study.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
"Introduction: The Growth of Wilderness Seeds"	p. 1
The Unreceived Wilderness Idea: The Road Not Taken
"Animal Life as an Asset of National Parks"	p. 21
"The Need for a More Serious Effort to Rescue a Few Fragments of Vanishing Nature"	p. 30
"Importance of Natural Conditions in National Parks"	p. 45
"The Importance of Preserving Wilderness Conditions"	p. 55
"Problems of Geographical Origin," from Fauna of the National Parks of the United States: A Preliminary Survey of Faunal Relations in National Parks	p. 67
"Big Game of Our National Parks"	p. 71
"The Preservation of Natural Biotic Communities"	p. 79
"Conservation versus Preservation"	p. 90
"Wilderness as a Land Laboratory"	p. 93
"Science, Recreation, and Leopold's Quest for a Durable Scale"	p. 97
"The Value of Wilderness to Science"	p. 119
"From Woodcraft to 'Leave No Trace': Wilderness, Consumerism, and Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America"	p. 137
"Wilderness Preservation Argument 31: The Psychotherapy at a Distance Argument"	p. 170
Race, Class, Culture, and Wilderness
"Imagining Nature and Erasing Class and Race: Carleton Watkins, John Muir, and the Construction of Wilderness"	p. 189
"Jackfish Pete: Pete LaPrairie's Story"	p. 218
"Wilderness Preservation and Biodiversity Conservation: Keeping Divergent Goals Distinct"	p. 231
"Cross-Cultural Confusion: Application of World Heritage Concepts in Scenic and Historic Interest Areas in China"	p. 252
"Recycled Rain Forest Myths"	p. 264
"A Willing Benefactor: An Essay on Wilderness in Nilotic and Bantu Culture"	p. 282
"What Is Africa to Me? Wilderness in Black Thought, 1860-1930"	p. 300
"African-American Wildland Memories"	p. 325
The Wilderness Idea Roundly Criticized and Defended ... Again
"Is Nature Real?"	p. 351
"Contemporary Criticisms of the Received Wilderness Idea"	p. 355
"The Real Wilderness Idea"	p. 378
"Changing Human Relationships with Nature: Making and Remaking Wilderness Science"	p. 398
"The Not-So-Great Wilderness Debate ... Continued"	p. 423
"On Wilderness and People: A View from Mt. Marcy"	p. 435
"Something Wild? Deleuze and Guattari, Wilderness, and Purity"	p. 461
"Wild: Rhythm of the Appearing and Disappearing"	p. 485
"Against the Social Construction of Nature and Wilderness"	p. 500
"Wilderness, Cultivation and Appropriation"	p. 526
"Conservation Biologists Challenge Traditional Nature Protection Organizations"	p. 551
Thinking through the Wilderness Idea
"Wilderness"	p. 563
"The Implication of the 'Shifting Paradigm' in Ecology for Paradigm Shifts in the Philosophy of Conservation"	p. 571
"Hell, No. Of Course Not. But ..."	p. 601
"Wilderness as a Sabbath for the Land"	p. 603
"Distinguishing Experiential and Physical Conceptions of Wilderness"	p. 611
"The Riddle of the Apostle Islands: How Do You Manage a Wilderness Full of Human Stories?"	p. 632
"Letting Nature Run Wild in the National Parks"	p. 645
"Ecological Theory and Values in the Determination of Conservation Goals: Examples from Temperate Regions of Germany, United States of America, and Chile"	p. 664
"Wilderness as Witness (Cape Perpetua)"	p. 692
Index	p. 697
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.